TendanceHotellerie.fr is a French website for hoteliers, they do news and information about the French Hotel Industry and it’s a clean look and fell.

Vincent Rajjoo one of the editors there recently interviewed me and I thought I would publish the link. It is mainly for les Francais but if you’re interested you could translate it with one of the online translation tools.

It has been a pretty busy time since I last posted. Back in November we were still warming up for the launch of Lookotel.com and since then it has been just flat out travelling, seeing (great) people, meeting the hoteliers, and other industry people. And a lot more.

But I thought I should catch up with everyone and start posting again.

After the launch, here is the article in Hotels Magazine that appeared and I’m pretty happy with it.

PARIS: 17 November 2009, WIHP (World Indernational Hotel Promotion) launched their website Lookotel.com as the new way to promote your hotel online, commission free. At the event some of the guests present were owner of Mr. Lafortune from Hotel de l’Abbaye, Mr Vaurs and Mr Sauvage, creators and owners of Hotel The Five and Le Hidden, The Kouana family owners of Le Modern and others. Fabrice Affuta from Hotel Napoleon and more.

Lookotel already was a big hit for the Paris sector with great results on Google searches. The site won immediate approval from Parisian hoteliers as a great alternative to OTAs and other commission based sites.

Lookotel.com pledged to the Parisian hoteliers to remain commission free and to always drive traffic to their websites for direct sales in exchange for a subscription fee that hoteliers pay.

The claims are high with figures such as:
– 47% of visitors on Lookotel get interested and want more information on hotels they see listed

– 1 out of 3 internet users seeing a hotel on Lookotel will visit your website

– 500% increased visitors in less than one year. From 280,000 to 1,600,240 page views.

At the event Mr Ramelli creator of Lookotel, launched Lookotel.com for the international market. A new subscription system was implemented with different levels of membership for increasing services and a free 4 month trial for any new subscribers.